Rockwell Reports 3.6% Profit Increase for 1st Quarter : Earnings: The change is attributed to higher profits in the company’s electronics and automotive businesses.

SEAL BEACH — Higher profits in its electronics and automotive businesses pushed up Rockwell International Corp. quarterly earnings by 3.6%, the company reported Monday.

Based on the strength of those results for the company’s fiscal first quarter, Donald Beall, Rockwell chairman and chief executive, predicted a double-digit earnings gain for the year.

Rockwell posted a profit of $127.8 million, or 58 cents a share, for the three months ended Dec. 31. That compared to earnings of $123.3 million, or 54 cents a share, for the same period a year earlier and was in line with what analysts had expected.

Sales for the quarter fell 2.7% to $2.49 billion, however, a decline that the company attributed to market forces.

The earnings gain, Beall said, reflects a continued strengthening of Rockwell’s industrial automation, automotive and telecommunications businesses.

The company said it also has continued to restructure and cut costs. Part of that has been a reduction in staff, Rockwell said. The company had 79,000 employees worldwide at the beginning of the fiscal year in October, down from 87,000 a year earlier. In Orange County, Rockwell said, employment fell from 9,200 to 6,140 during the same period.

Rockwell said its first-quarter earnings are even more impressive considering that the year-earlier quarter included a gain of 8 cents a share from the sale of a product line.

The earlier figure also excluded a one-time $1.52-billion charge to reflect an accounting change for retirement medical benefits.

In Rockwell’s auto parts operations, profit increased almost 50%, to $26.2 million, while sales rose 10% to $615 million.

Part of the increase was because of cost-cutting, the company said. William Mellon, a spokesman, said Rockwell also benefited from improving markets in heavy-duty trucks in North America and in passenger cars in Europe and Japan.

Earnings for the company’s electronics operations rose 31% to $139.9 million, and its sales increased 2.8% to $1.08 billion. The gains came from its industrial automation, telecommunications and avionics businesses, Rockwell said. Defense electronics earnings, however, came in slightly below those for the same period a year earlier.

In its aerospace business, Rockwell said, its first-quarter earnings dropped 6.5% to $86.2 million because of lower sales to the space shuttle program. Aerospace sales fell almost 19% to $644 million.

Quarterly sales figures also declined in the graphics operation, which makes newspaper printing presses, to $152 million from $162 million. Rockwell said it trimmed that unit’s loss for the quarter to $500,000 from $1.5 million a year earlier.